I am, quite frankly, very surprised that Trump did not include any of the Confederate heroes in his Garden of Delights. I figured he would have at least tried to sneak in Bobby Lee if not Nathan Bedford Forrest.
But failing those kinds of statues, why didn't he include Henry Ford? Trump could have spackled over Ford's intense racism and antisemitism (and devotion to the Nazis) by just blithering about how Ford made American industry the greatest in the world.
TBH: I'm on record to a now-boring extent of having issues with Roy's Donnie -- too lucid, too coherent, speaks in sentences instead of phrases and series of unconnected words and too smart. (I'm sure Donnie's smarter than I give him credit for except I start around Tillerson level so smarter than that is [I'm checking] pretty damn stupid and Roy's Trump is yet smarter than that.
That all said -- or whined -- there was this:
"Steve, I know you feel let down, so tell you what — I’ll have one of the statues doing a white power sign."
On the one hand, I read Roy as saying that Trump's shrewd enough when it's something he cares about - like survival or grifting, that catches his attention and he displays actually thinking about something, rather than the random-neuron-firing didn't-do-the-reading stream-of-consciousness he displays in stuff he doesn't care about, like COVID-19 response briefings. Regardless of what Roy is saying, I actually enjoy this Trump the way I enjoyed Phil Hartman's Reagan as the incisive mastermind of Iran-Contra.
When I think about this ridiculous National Garden idea I picture it as a perverse version of Disney’s Hall of Presidents. Maybe the statues should be animatronic, they can recite a lot of Lost Cause gibberish and flash the white power sign at visitors.
Rapid City has statues of all the past Presidents on downtown corners. Sadly, Reagan is probably the most popular as one of his shoulders has been worn down by all the people putting their arms around him for a picture
The problem with the whole Garden of Statues thing is, Trump doesn’t respect anyone not named Trump. He’d like to think that his saggy orange face will be plastered on every building, like Mao or Stalin, or at least in every classroom. If by some dark miracle, he wins a second term, that’s probably what he’ll do. Other famous people in a garden? He couldn’t care less.
I know they floated this Garden of Earthly Delights or statues or whatever the hell they’re pitching at their Independence Day herrenvolk/white power rally in My Fair State, but where the hell is this thing supposed to be built anyway? Oh, why the hell am I even asking? This is just another toxic fart to gin up the rubes and Own The Libs, and it’ll be forgotten next week.
Supposed to is the operative word. Not going to happen.
But now that I think about it, I wonder whether Donnie's going to con some fool(s) into paying for a statue of himself to put in front of a fine Trump bedbug facile I mean property.
This whole garden of statues “idea” is just the latest example of conservatives sticking it to the libs with all the style and panache of a bratty third grader. “You wanna take down the statues of racists and confederate traitors? Nuh-uh! We’re gonna put up *more* statues of guys you don’t like!” [crosses arms with belligerent shit-eating smirk; MAGA crowd does wild]
<blockquote>He was walking through a room bigger than a city, and everywhere he looked there were statues and carvings and rough-hewn images. He was standing beside a statue of a woman-like thing: her naked breasts hung, flat and pendulous on her chest, around her waist was a chain of severed hands, both of her own hands held sharp knives, and, instead of a head, rising from her neck there were twin serpents, their bodies arched, facing each other, ready to attack. There was something profoundly disturbing about the statue, a deep and violent wrongness. Shadow backed away from it.
He began to walk through the hall. The carved eyes of those statues that had eyes seemed to follow his every step.
In his dream, he realized that each statue had a name burning on the floor in front of it. The man with the white hair, with a necklace of teeth about his neck, holding a drum, was Leucotios; the broad-hipped woman, with monsters dropping from the vast gash between her legs, was Hubur; the ram-headed man holding the golden ball was Hershef.
A precise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could see no one.
“These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us.”
Shadow turned a corner, and knew himself to be in another room, even vaster than the first. It went on further than the eye could see. Close to him was the skull of a mammoth, polished and brown, and a hairy ochre cloak, being worn by a small woman with a deformed left hand. Next to that were three women, each carved from the same granite boulder, joined at the waist: their faces had an unfinished, hasty look to them, although their breasts and genitalia had been carved with elaborate care; and there was a flightless bird which Shadow did not recognize, twice his height, with a beak made for rending, like a vulture’s, but with human arms: and on, and on.
The voice spoke once more, as if it were addressing a class, saying, “These are the gods who have passed out of memory. Even their names are lost. The people who worshiped them are as forgotten as their gods. Their totems are long since broken and cast down. Their last priests died without passing on their secrets.
“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”</blockquote>
I still have money on a gilded Roy Cohn peeing Trump Vodka. Maybe if he read the Scott Lively book Trump will come around on the gay thing. Okay, if someone summarizes it for him. I'm guessing Miller has a copy. Probably autographed.
Milton Glaser (RIP) famously regretted designing the bottle. Safe bet it's the only think with Donnie's name on it that looks truly good. Great job by Glaser.
TRUMP: Tell ya what, look--as long as we're doing the Davy Crockett ride, let's divide the place into what I call 'lands.' So Davy Crockett is from the Land of the Frontier, say. And say we have Hugh Hefner to anchor the Land of Fantasy, because right? Then maybe a visionizer, a visionaryizer like Thomas Edison to welcome you to the Land of Tomorrow. And an explorer, like what's his name, Lewis N. Clark, for the Land of Adventure. Plus--
MILLER: My President, what you are describing is basically Disneyland.
Not only the Culture War as Trump's election "strategy" but also we should expect to hear ever more idiotic proposals from his addled brain over the next several months. What we won't hear is a national plan for addressing the pandemic.
This is one of the best this site has ever produced. It helps me see gosh, we really do have a president whose response to pandemic and depression is to micromanage the launch of an amusement park. Advised by weirdoes who think what makes America great is its ancient Spartan values and racism. Also, people definitely would vote for Howard Stern! Baba booey. And bonus points for the Cream Of Wheat guy...
Side note: I bought aunt jemima pancake mix yesterday, thinking “thank goodness she’s on her way out, let’s buy one to celebrate.” And after I put it in the basket I turned around, and there was a black dude who saw me choose it over krusteaz (a much less racist brand), and in a moment of panic and shame I thought “oh no—he might think I picked it because I’m super racist! Maybe I just ruined his day!” I hurried off in guilt. And that was my trip to the bodega.
Well, in anticipation of the rebranding and for the protection of snowflakes, the bodega owner should have returned to whichever global conglomerate is making it. So it's all on the bodega owner.
Just brilliant. Forgive me, but I imagine Miller more impassioned about his real idols:
MILLER: No Coughlin? No Lindbergh? What about George Lincoln Rockwell? Or Theophilus Eugene Connor? Or Lester Garfield Maddox? I mean, I want something I can proudly take my kids to! Bitte, mein Führer! Bitte! Hast du nichst gehört? Ich habe meine Frau imprägniert!
TRUMP: If that means what I think it means then, y'know, ewww.
A friend of mine went to see this when it was still a thing with the hope of breaking even or better, and even then, it was just sad. Then, as in the article, it flopped, and the field owner couldn't let go, and paid $50k to move them to his place--damaging them all in the process, and now they're falling apart, mocking the glory of the world.
The punch line, for me, was that there were two other iterations of this ill-considered scheme, neither of which is faring much better.
I am, quite frankly, very surprised that Trump did not include any of the Confederate heroes in his Garden of Delights. I figured he would have at least tried to sneak in Bobby Lee if not Nathan Bedford Forrest.
But failing those kinds of statues, why didn't he include Henry Ford? Trump could have spackled over Ford's intense racism and antisemitism (and devotion to the Nazis) by just blithering about how Ford made American industry the greatest in the world.
(There's already a Garden of Confederate Delights--it's called Fort Benning.)
Somehow starting to see Kellogg's Tony The Tiger enshrined, out of place, in the Hall of Foam-core and Cement-Pour Fascism.
Christ, what a #ConfederacyOfDunces, to coin a phrase. Hate ripping off someone with a troubled life but there you go. Fit's to a T. (This one in particular: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.UQrWRGd8jPBCY_9aFC4PAAHaIz%26pid%3DApi&f=1)
TBH: I'm on record to a now-boring extent of having issues with Roy's Donnie -- too lucid, too coherent, speaks in sentences instead of phrases and series of unconnected words and too smart. (I'm sure Donnie's smarter than I give him credit for except I start around Tillerson level so smarter than that is [I'm checking] pretty damn stupid and Roy's Trump is yet smarter than that.
That all said -- or whined -- there was this:
"Steve, I know you feel let down, so tell you what — I’ll have one of the statues doing a white power sign."
Made me laugh.
On the one hand, I read Roy as saying that Trump's shrewd enough when it's something he cares about - like survival or grifting, that catches his attention and he displays actually thinking about something, rather than the random-neuron-firing didn't-do-the-reading stream-of-consciousness he displays in stuff he doesn't care about, like COVID-19 response briefings. Regardless of what Roy is saying, I actually enjoy this Trump the way I enjoyed Phil Hartman's Reagan as the incisive mastermind of Iran-Contra.
OK, “four bears” finished me, LOL.
When I think about this ridiculous National Garden idea I picture it as a perverse version of Disney’s Hall of Presidents. Maybe the statues should be animatronic, they can recite a lot of Lost Cause gibberish and flash the white power sign at visitors.
Rapid City has statues of all the past Presidents on downtown corners. Sadly, Reagan is probably the most popular as one of his shoulders has been worn down by all the people putting their arms around him for a picture
https://www.presidentsusa.net/reaganrapidcity.html
St Ronnie’s idol would’ve been better if it were modeled after Slim Pickens in the ending of Dr Strangelove
The problem with the whole Garden of Statues thing is, Trump doesn’t respect anyone not named Trump. He’d like to think that his saggy orange face will be plastered on every building, like Mao or Stalin, or at least in every classroom. If by some dark miracle, he wins a second term, that’s probably what he’ll do. Other famous people in a garden? He couldn’t care less.
Still overthinking it, Doc. Not happening.
If memories were all they had, I still wouldn't give a fuck.
I laughed at “screaming and on fire” so now I have some idea of how horrible a person I am.
One has to make exceptions for the deserving.
I know they floated this Garden of Earthly Delights or statues or whatever the hell they’re pitching at their Independence Day herrenvolk/white power rally in My Fair State, but where the hell is this thing supposed to be built anyway? Oh, why the hell am I even asking? This is just another toxic fart to gin up the rubes and Own The Libs, and it’ll be forgotten next week.
On the Mall? Mar-A-Lago? Trump Towers Moscow?
The Badlands
Supposed to is the operative word. Not going to happen.
But now that I think about it, I wonder whether Donnie's going to con some fool(s) into paying for a statue of himself to put in front of a fine Trump bedbug facile I mean property.
This whole garden of statues “idea” is just the latest example of conservatives sticking it to the libs with all the style and panache of a bratty third grader. “You wanna take down the statues of racists and confederate traitors? Nuh-uh! We’re gonna put up *more* statues of guys you don’t like!” [crosses arms with belligerent shit-eating smirk; MAGA crowd does wild]
I assume they stole the idea from downtown Rapid City
This is one lib who doesn't give a, well, you know by now, so no, the right wing extremists are sticking anything to me.
<blockquote>He was walking through a room bigger than a city, and everywhere he looked there were statues and carvings and rough-hewn images. He was standing beside a statue of a woman-like thing: her naked breasts hung, flat and pendulous on her chest, around her waist was a chain of severed hands, both of her own hands held sharp knives, and, instead of a head, rising from her neck there were twin serpents, their bodies arched, facing each other, ready to attack. There was something profoundly disturbing about the statue, a deep and violent wrongness. Shadow backed away from it.
He began to walk through the hall. The carved eyes of those statues that had eyes seemed to follow his every step.
In his dream, he realized that each statue had a name burning on the floor in front of it. The man with the white hair, with a necklace of teeth about his neck, holding a drum, was Leucotios; the broad-hipped woman, with monsters dropping from the vast gash between her legs, was Hubur; the ram-headed man holding the golden ball was Hershef.
A precise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could see no one.
“These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us.”
Shadow turned a corner, and knew himself to be in another room, even vaster than the first. It went on further than the eye could see. Close to him was the skull of a mammoth, polished and brown, and a hairy ochre cloak, being worn by a small woman with a deformed left hand. Next to that were three women, each carved from the same granite boulder, joined at the waist: their faces had an unfinished, hasty look to them, although their breasts and genitalia had been carved with elaborate care; and there was a flightless bird which Shadow did not recognize, twice his height, with a beak made for rending, like a vulture’s, but with human arms: and on, and on.
The voice spoke once more, as if it were addressing a class, saying, “These are the gods who have passed out of memory. Even their names are lost. The people who worshiped them are as forgotten as their gods. Their totems are long since broken and cast down. Their last priests died without passing on their secrets.
“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”</blockquote>
Gaiman's alright, but so's Morris Bishop: https://thingfinder.blogspot.com/2011/04/also-names-of-emory-p-gray.html?m=0
I still have money on a gilded Roy Cohn peeing Trump Vodka. Maybe if he read the Scott Lively book Trump will come around on the gay thing. Okay, if someone summarizes it for him. I'm guessing Miller has a copy. Probably autographed.
Hey now that Charlie Daniels finally lost his bet with the Devil, maybe Orange Franco will add him to the sculpture garden
Milton Glaser (RIP) famously regretted designing the bottle. Safe bet it's the only think with Donnie's name on it that looks truly good. Great job by Glaser.
TRUMP: Tell ya what, look--as long as we're doing the Davy Crockett ride, let's divide the place into what I call 'lands.' So Davy Crockett is from the Land of the Frontier, say. And say we have Hugh Hefner to anchor the Land of Fantasy, because right? Then maybe a visionizer, a visionaryizer like Thomas Edison to welcome you to the Land of Tomorrow. And an explorer, like what's his name, Lewis N. Clark, for the Land of Adventure. Plus--
MILLER: My President, what you are describing is basically Disneyland.
TRUMP: What--like that's bad?
Not only the Culture War as Trump's election "strategy" but also we should expect to hear ever more idiotic proposals from his addled brain over the next several months. What we won't hear is a national plan for addressing the pandemic.
Salesmen don't *do* operations; that's for other, lesser beings.
This is one of the best this site has ever produced. It helps me see gosh, we really do have a president whose response to pandemic and depression is to micromanage the launch of an amusement park. Advised by weirdoes who think what makes America great is its ancient Spartan values and racism. Also, people definitely would vote for Howard Stern! Baba booey. And bonus points for the Cream Of Wheat guy...
Side note: I bought aunt jemima pancake mix yesterday, thinking “thank goodness she’s on her way out, let’s buy one to celebrate.” And after I put it in the basket I turned around, and there was a black dude who saw me choose it over krusteaz (a much less racist brand), and in a moment of panic and shame I thought “oh no—he might think I picked it because I’m super racist! Maybe I just ruined his day!” I hurried off in guilt. And that was my trip to the bodega.
lol
Well, in anticipation of the rebranding and for the protection of snowflakes, the bodega owner should have returned to whichever global conglomerate is making it. So it's all on the bodega owner.
Just brilliant. Forgive me, but I imagine Miller more impassioned about his real idols:
MILLER: No Coughlin? No Lindbergh? What about George Lincoln Rockwell? Or Theophilus Eugene Connor? Or Lester Garfield Maddox? I mean, I want something I can proudly take my kids to! Bitte, mein Führer! Bitte! Hast du nichst gehört? Ich habe meine Frau imprägniert!
TRUMP: If that means what I think it means then, y'know, ewww.
Hard to pick out one exchange to highlight. I especially liked Trump thinking forebearers was four bears.
A traveler I met from an old dominion revealed
"43 heads of cracked cement stand
Forgotten and decayed in a farmer's field..."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-43-decaying-president-heads-looks-180958129/
A friend of mine went to see this when it was still a thing with the hope of breaking even or better, and even then, it was just sad. Then, as in the article, it flopped, and the field owner couldn't let go, and paid $50k to move them to his place--damaging them all in the process, and now they're falling apart, mocking the glory of the world.
The punch line, for me, was that there were two other iterations of this ill-considered scheme, neither of which is faring much better.
"Not a bust undamaged stands. All round
The useless, unplowed fields barrenly bound."
Nice Ozymandias parody, Kip!